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BOOK REVIEW: Heat: Adventures in the World's Fiery Places by Bill Streever

Review by Allison Bohac

On the heels of his previous book Cold, biologist Bill Streever takes the next logical step and sets out to understand what happens, scientifically speaking, when things get hot.

The result is part scientific narrative, part travelog. Streever visits nuclear blast sites and laboratories where supercollider experiments reach trillions of degrees Fahrenheit. He interviews physicists, geologists, firefighters and instructors who teach firewalking at corporate team-building seminars. He recounts the history of volcanoes that belch scorching pyroclastic flows, describes blistering fevers and explains what happens to the human body after a few days in the desert without water.

Heat is packed with anecdotes, and Streever’s boundless enthusiasm for high-temperature topics makes the book an engaging read. He is at his best when relating his own adventures, such a

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